ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Many Americans hit the mall today. Black Friday is still the busiest shopping day of the year. But overall, people are visiting malls a lot less than they used to. NPR's Alina Selyukh brings us the story of an exception - Mall of America, the biggest of all. Its survival strategy is now spreading fast.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: The main attraction of Mall of America near Minneapolis is surprisingly easy to miss when you first walk in until you realize echoing between the stores are screams from roller coasters at an amusement park in the heart of the mall.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Screaming).
SELYUKH: For locals like Sarah Mateen and her daughter, Maeve, this is a top reason to visit.
How old are you?
MAEVE: Six.
SELYUKH: Did you like the ride?
MAEVE: Yeah.
SARAH MATEEN: She said she had lots of butterflies.
SELYUKH: Maeve just got off her first big kid ride, called the Nickelodeon Splat-O-Sphere. It soars high...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Screaming).
SELYUKH: ...Then plunges down.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Screaming).
SELYUKH: They come every couple weeks, Matin says, mostly for the rides. But afterward...
MATEEN: Probably go to a couple different stores.
SELYUKH: ...It's shopping time. This was exactly the plan when Mall of America developers back in the early '90s decided to stick five football fields' worth of carousels and roller coasters in the middle, with stores surrounding in a rectangle. It was rare then. It's still rare now. But the idea behind it, called retailtainment (ph), is a big trend to save the American mall.
MOHIT MOHAL: Spas, hair salons, activities for kids, more upscale dining.
SELYUKH: Mohit Mohal advises retailers at the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal. He says plenty of malls cannot afford this change or they're too far gone to try. But many of those with a chance are basically trying to turn back time to when a mall was more than a place to return an online order but a destination for the day.
MOHAL: And that is helping revive the traffic in the mall.
SELYUKH: Mall of America does retailtainment on steroids, and it's one of the top malls in the U.S., with sales and visits growing. Top executive Jill Renslow says the mall started out 80% retail, 20% entertainment. Now entertainment is closer to 40%.
JILL RENSLOW: We have sea life. We have Museum of Illusions. We have Wink World and FlyOver and miniature golf courses.
SELYUKH: Yes, an aquarium, also arcades, escape rooms. A water park is in the works. One thing did stand out, though. Talking to shoppers at these spots, many said the only thing they bought besides tickets that day were snacks at the food court. I asked Renslow how that made sense for the rest of the mall, for the stores.
RENSLOW: The longer time that they spend in a space, typically, they're going to spend more money. But even if they don't on that first visit, they're going to come back because they had a great experience. We're along for the ride for a long haul.
SELYUKH: And so the strategy seems just getting people in the door. The mall throws hundreds of events - the largest gathering of people dressed as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, wrestling matches, hair bedazzling before a Taylor Swift show, even a rave.
RENSLOW: We're always keeping an eye on what's coming down the road. We're looking at movie releases, music releases. Who's touring this marketplace?
SELYUKH: Like one time, they got Ed Sheeran staffing the Lego store. Of course, being a massive tourist destination helps a lot.
RENSLOW: Especially in Minnesota. I mean, we're 70 and sunny every day.
SELYUKH: Thirty-two million people visit a year - folks like Amanda Smith from New York and her 11-year-old nephew, Richard Strack from Florida, who are in town for a family wedding.
AMANDA SMITH: We're just coming to the mall to kill some time in between.
RICHARD STRACK: It's fantastic. I got a fidget cube. And then I got a fidget spinner.
SELYUKH: A few feet away, I see Andrew Stokke leaning on a cart with cleaning supplies.
ANDREW STOKKE: I'm a housekeeper at the Mall of America. Yeah.
SELYUKH: And he points out the hard part of a thriving mall.
STOKKE: There's always been construction here for the whole 16 years I've been here. This is brand-new. That's brand new. This is new. This is new. So it's constant.
SELYUKH: That means also a hunt for uncommon stores and pop-ups - a spa for children, a shop of Japanese snacks and toys, a physical space for a TikTok brand. Renslow, the executive, called change the secret ingredient, staleness the enemy of survival.
RENSLOW: You can't fall to the wayside of just doing what you've always done.
SELYUKH: It's the mall's job to reinvent itself to draw people in and then stores inside to turn those visitors into shoppers. Alina Selyukh, NPR News, Minneapolis. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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